Vacation and Destiny
Notes from some of Fr. Giussani's conversations with the Giessini (the high school branch of Communion and Liberation), with the university students and with the young workers groups in the 60's and 70's. Though brief, we are offering them here once again. From our past come suggestions for living the present better.
The Time for Freedom
It is not having to do, but having to be. Summer vacation is the time for freedom, not one that frees you from studying, but a freedom that obliges you to face the efforts and responsibilities of freedom and sincerity. It is a time when an understanding of what it is you really want can come to the surface.
There is, inside me the presence of something as real as the sea or the mountains. I am always myself.
Summer vacation is the time of the personality. Maintaining the permanence of a criterion (moment of faithfulness and of continuity).
After a time, even a novelty will cease to be new and can provoke boredom. The real novelty is the true search for our destiny. Pay attention to those around you.
Adapting oneself to an environment does not mean to let yourself be compromised by it.
Bad things to avoid:
- thinking of rest as forgetting everything that happened before
- absence of a program
- accepting to play a part just because it makes you more popular with those around you
- fear of being left alone, which often hides the fear of the responsibility of time
Set aside certain moments of the day (know what you are going towards) for serious things, for prayer.
Always know how to take up where you left off. Write, Go to the summer meetings, Try to live kindly. Be discreet.
Avoid certain experiences.
Notes from a Ray meeting, 9 June, 1962
Work and Rest
Work expresses life as life; it fills up all of life. Work, in the strictest sense - that is, going to a certain place, or performing certain actions which you are held answerable for and for which there is a payment that allows you to live - occupies more of your life than rest does, more than sleeping. In fact, work competes with rest for space in our lives, and this binomial is impressive because it is Man himself who is divided between an amount of inertia and an amount of energy. In any case, work strives against rest for the greatest number of hours in our lives.
We use the word "work" also in a wider sense, as a synonym for "life," that is, as an expression of ourselves. And, in fact, when we go away together, for those who manage to remain faithful, to follow us faithfully even on vacation, what is their impression compared to the vacations they had before? Before, they were empty and now they feel full. Or when we go on an excursion together, acting according to our spirit, where does the difference lie? When they get home in the evening, that is not the end of everything, it is not a finished episode. Why are these vacations and excursions different? Because they constitute a sort of work. As a matter of fact, many people are scared off by this, many stop following us because of this. If they were to proceed, to continue following, then at the end of the day excursion or fifteen days' vacation, of the kind formulated by us, the time would be full, anyone would feel that it was full, and that the time had not been wasted. They would feel that they had worked.
G.L. Exercises, Varigotti, 2 May, 1964
Consciousness and Companions
Our existence is, above all, a life. Therefore, it is not a series of detached moments. There are moments that can strike or impress us strongly, but if they were detached, they would not recall us and introduce us to life. They would not resolve themselves within a life as a whole.
There is no vacation from life or from growing up. Therefore, for the summer period, we would like to underline two points.
There are two particular characteristics of summer life to consider:
1) Consciousness. Summer vacation is the moment in which you can most freely and calmly increase your consciousness. We will be aware of our liberty, if we have consciousness. The moment of freedom is when we can most easily become ourselves.
2) Companions. We must be intransigent in setting up our way of relating to the people we are with. Let us look for clear expression when judging our company. And to maintain this, we need to continue to refer to the community.
G.S. (Student Youth) School, 6 June, 1965
On the Journey
To follow someone or something is to question the sense of oneself. In this way, following becomes work. The person or thing that you follow does not put you face to face with the true meaning of yourself (Jesus will do that when He comes at the end of the world), but the person you follow, putting yourself at stake, places before you the sense of yourself within a determinate gesture. We will be able to see the sense of ourselves very clearly at the end, but before the end, there is a whole plot of gestures that is called life. One gesture, for example, could be a vacation - not a vacation as mast people conceive it - but one that becomes a journey, a step on the journey towards greater maturity. This maturity consists in an increased consciousness of the connection between each moment and one's destiny, of the connection between oneself and others (communion), and of the connection between one's actions and the things around him (order). So that it is possible to discover, in such a situation, an improvement in oneself. a greater sense of oneself.
CLU Équipe (University Group), 2 September, 1978
